


you may be my soulmate but i dont have a soul

by AppleJuiz



Series: the L in Love stands for Loser [6]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: (Junior) Prom, Angst and Humor, Angst with a Happy Ending, Established Relationship, F/M, Michelle POV
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-11
Updated: 2017-09-11
Packaged: 2018-12-26 12:31:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,551
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12059058
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AppleJuiz/pseuds/AppleJuiz
Summary: “You're good at singing,” he explains a few seconds later and everything stops working.It takes a moment for her to make sense of what has happened. One of her Spotify playlists is playing from the speaker and she had gone from humming to singing along without realizing as she made breakfast in his apartment after spending the night.She comes to about a dozen realizations in a split second.He’s heard her sing.She has to break up with him.





	you may be my soulmate but i dont have a soul

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! Thanks again for all the great prompts that have been coming my way. There are so many great ones and I have so many ideas of my own. I have like half a dozen stories I'm working on, but hopefully I get to them all soon. 
> 
> Anyway I wanted to write some angst because I'm terrible and somebody said they wanted a story where Peter says something that surprises Michelle and a lot of people were asking for things like prom so here we are. I hope you enjoy!

The end of the world begins on a Saturday morning in November.

She's staggered out of Peter’s bedroom with one of his fluffier blankets draped over her shoulders like a cape. Not a superhero one, she decides, eyes bleary, mind taking its time rebooting. This apartment has enough superheroes, not this is a queen’s cape because she is a queen and also she needs tea desperately.

Peter trails after her, grumbling nonsense about how early it is and how she took all the body heat.

He heads for the coffeemaker, the heathen, while she scrambles around their cupboards for the kettle.

“I'm making May coffee,” he announces.

“I'm making her tea,” she shoots back. He pouts at her and she scowls back. It takes a fraction of a second for him to break, grinning. She rolls her eyes because she's about to return an equally ridiculous smile.

He steps in, leans up a little and pecks her quickly on the lips.

“Disgusting,” she says. “You didn't even brush your teeth.”

“We just spent the past half hour making out.”

She sighs just a little. There's something about waking up next to Peter, warm and tangled in him, his messy hair and his soft eyes and the way the light lands softly on them in the bottom bunk.

What is she supposed to not make out with him? With that ambiance?

She hip checks him on her way to the mugs. On the way she takes her phone out, sticks it in the little speaker on the counter. She has three podcasts to catch up on, but her phone is being weird and starts playing off Spotify.

She's still too tired to bother fixing it, so just keeps moving.

She raids their breadbox, popping two slices into the toaster and debates sitting on the counter while she waits.

Peter is looking at her, all dorkily with his little grin and his floppy hair.

She glares at him, sticks her tongue out at him.

“You're good at singing,” he explains a few seconds later and everything stops working.

It takes a moment for her to make sense of what has happened. One of her Spotify playlists is playing from the speaker and she had gone from humming to singing along without realizing as she made breakfast in his apartment after spending the night.

She comes to about a dozen realizations in a split second, her entire universe being rewritten and redefined from this one stupid compliment that came out of nowhere.

He’s heard her sing.

She has to break up with him.

“What is singing?” She says a beat too late, after a few stuttered false starts. She has to act normal. Well weird, but her patented version of weird and not this terrible actual emotional weird that's rising through her stomach and fizzing in her brain.

He smiles and squeezes her hand. And then the kettle is hissing and she has an excuse to brush past him and start pouring while Peter stands anxiously in front of the coffee machine, slowly pumping out its subpar caffeination.

He's still standing there when she carries a second cup of tea over to May’s room, sticking her tongue out as she goes. He groans, bouncing in place, all his energy.

When she looks at him, in the kitchen right there, his baggy pajamas and his messy bed head and the soft dumb smile on his face and his eyes and the hickey she left on his neck and him in the soft light in front of the coffee machine.

He's beautiful and it's grossly unfair.

For a moment it's all she can think of, how beautiful he is, dumb, perfect, sweet, beautiful Peter.

She's had these thoughts before, waxed the same poetic nonsense about his curls and his eyes and his smile in her head. How ridiculous. She can just keep coming back to the sappy bullshit, these little things about Peter fucking Parker, can't get enough of her thoughts about him and her knowledge of him and him.

For a moment, retracing the same lines along his face and the line of his shoulders, retracing the same trains of thoughts, she can almost pretend she hasn't had a revelation, a disastrous epiphany. She can pretend that everything is normal. Well not normal, but their normal.

Fucking feelings, man.

She brings May her tea and tries to forget that she has to break up with Peter Parker.

 

Michelle in general, as a rule really, tries to avoid feelings.

That’s not the problem though. She’s long resigned herself to dealing with certain feelings concerning Peter in lieu of her other rule against denying the few feelings that manage to slip through the cracks. To be able to know everything (and everybody and subsequently manipulate the masses) she has to know herself first.

There is exactly one (1) day that she allows herself to angst over her relationship with Peter, a week after they start dating, when he’s off somewhere saving the world or studying for Spanish or doing something dumb.

She’s not built for relationships. Despite her feelings for Peter and the potential relationship she put together in her head, an isolated idealistic vacuum, a part of her never planned on anything coming from her obsession with Peter Parker.

It was a way to pass the time, a lighthearted break from the pressure of fighting societal norms and chem studying.

The feelings thing, the being considerate to others and caring about their feelings, niceties and romance and love aren’t in her skill set. She’s good with an insult, a witty comeback, a scathing takedown.

And while the idea of women in relationships needing to be docile is a bunch of ridiculous bullcrap, there’s a certain softness required to make any relationship thing work. So while Peter had always been something she wanted, and she usually knew what to do to get what she wanted, she also knew better than to attempt something and taking on something she couldn’t handle.

Well, she should have known better.

So she locks the door to her room and sets aside her French homework and for a few hours stares at her ceiling and works her way through it, slowly dismantles every argument her brain makes against this thing.

Every little thing that whispers that Peter is better than her, a good person, a kind person. That kind people, sweet people like Peter fucking Parker deserve other kind sweet people, people who can articulate the softness and care that sweet boys like Peter need.

That he likes her back and she’ll probably end up walking all over him because of it, because that’s what Peter does. That she should back out because he might not. That he doesn’t see how much of a trainwreck this is going to be and she should spare him the grief (not herself, she deserves the grief for not listening to reason.)

She kindly reminds herself that that’s all bullshit, that Peter has a brain that he’s shown to be useful sometimes. That he knows her and knows who she is, knows what type of friend she is and if he thinks being in a relationship is going to make her change in any fundamental way then fuck him. (Well there’s a thought. And another argument for not backing out.)

He’s met her before, she’s ruthlessly bullied him before, he's flaked on her and she's thrown her barbs and they're still here. They still both decided to try this out.

She's Michelle Jones and she wants this and she knows how to get what she wants.

 

They get ACT scores back on a rainy day in April.

It's her first time taking it after years of intensive studying and while she had to talk Ned and later Peter down from a panic attack the night before, she was ambivalent.

It was a test. A test about knowing stuff. She was good at tests and she knew stuff.

So she didn't really care about the test, didn't worry, but held Peter in her arms and stroked his hair whenever he got too worked up about it. And while she held his hand when he opened the email and even cracked a smile when he jumped around the kitchen with May after, when she sees her own email, a link to the ACT account, on her phone while they walk down an empty hall after school, she doesn't think twice.

She opens the email, clicks the link, signs in while Peter prattles on about some new suit design, and doesn't even realize.

It isn't until she's staring it in the face, her lit phone screen burning the number 36 into her retinas that everything hits her. She stops walking, stops listening to Peter, stops thinking for the first time in her life.

She sits down on the floor in the middle of the hallway, right where she is, presses her palm against the cold linoleum.

Peter notices after a second, turns and smiles at her.

“What?” He asks, waiting for a punchline. Maybe something about being bored or tired or whatever.

There is no punchline. There's just this number. This list of numbers, broken down into subjects where 36 is printed in a smaller font.

“Michelle,” he says, quietly, which he only uses when he's concerned or emotional. (The look in his eyes the first time he said, “Michelle, I love you.” still plays on a loop in her head when she’s bored.) “Oh my God, are you okay?”

It's then that she realizes she's crying, sticky wet tears smearing her cheeks.

She's crying. She hasn't cried since losing the Spelling Bee in the second grade. She hasn't cried in public since she was a toddler and she has never cried in front of Peter.

Peter who is next to her in a second, eyes wide with concern, hand hovering around her shoulders, panic in his voice, all that stupid love he has for her written in his bones.

She leans into him, running through the symptoms of shell shock in her head. He wraps his arms around her, tentatively and desperately.

“Michelle,” he says again, softly in her ear, which is straight up not fair, she’s trying to deal with one thing at a time here, Parker, she doesn’t have time for this other nonsense.

She buries her face in his neck and breathes in cuz that’s what Peter does when he’s an emotional wreck. Her arms feel limp at her sides, tingling just a little, but she picks up her phone again and double check the results. It’d be dumb to get this worked up over nothing.

It’s still there though.

“Holy shit,” Peter says, peering over her shoulder.

Indeed, she thinks, but doesn’t say because for maybe the first time in her life she’s speechless.

She’s not surprised, she knows she’s a genius and no test grade would change that. It’s not even about college. She knows she’s getting into Harvard (and that Peter’s getting into MIT). She’s busted her ass for it, carefully, meticulously planning extracurriculars and electives so even if the admission officer was an idiot, they’d have to be in a vegetative state to deny her application.

So she’s not necessarily surprised. But it still hits her, that right here on her fucking phone is some glorious validation of everything she’s been saying and doing for years.

She gets back to her feet shakily and resolutely does not look at Peter. Even when he scrambles up next to her and grabs her hand.

He doesn’t say anything which she appreciates, but out of the corner of her eye she can see the stupid look on his face, a mix of anxious concern and awed pride. He’s not sure to make of what just happened, which is good because she has no clue what just happened either. A glitch in the Matrix probably.

She wonders for a second, as she starts off down the hall like nothing happened at all. Back in the seventh grade when she was getting a handle of the whole life thing, she made a promise to herself that she would murder anyone who ever saw her cry. (Or anyone who saw her experience any emotion of any kind at any time.)

But she decides not to murder Peter, if for the greater good and also for her own selfish reasons, but she finds herself a little stunned again- no, not even, she can’t be stunned again for the next five years, just mildly intrigued- that she doesn’t really care that Peter has seen her cry.

In fact, Peter has seen her express quite a few emotions. Like one time she laughed in front of him for more than two seconds. And she’s gone on a few rants in front of him, even abandoned her monotone at times to really send a message home. And all those times she’s confessed her undying love for her and whatnot.

She's shown emotion around him and it hasn't been a big deal.

For some reason he's wormed his way past the rule, and she can be more honest with him. And he's good about it, doesn't even ask even though he really wants to.

“A ghost pepper sprayed me,” she explains after a few more seconds, because he deserves something. He laughs, and she feels like it's safe to actually look at the stupid look on his face.

He's beaming at her, and God, his stupid freaking face that’s not even fair is doing a thing.

She rolls her eyes, because what else is she supposed to do, express another emotion.

Even if she’s okay with Peter seeing her emotions, she’s not about to start having them all over the place. There are limits.

 

To be honest, a lot of people expect them to break up. Cuz they don’t really do couple things.

Things like general affection and dates and other hallmarks of normal high school relationships. And well, she scoffs in the face of normal. For starters.

But there are some things.

Things like the pet name thing.

Her pet names for Peter include (but are not limited to): dweeb, loser, dork, nerd, Spider-Dweeb, Spider-Boi, Spider-Nerd, Spider-Kid, Parker, lame-o, dipshit, asshole, fuckwit, weirdo, and so on. She likes coming up with new ones all the time. It’s a hobby.

She’s pretty sure Peter knows that they’re pet names. If only because he’s seen what she calls people she actually dislikes.

However there’s this one time she’s trying to sit down on the couch at the Avengers facility and she tells Peter to, “Make room, dipshit.” Which prompts Steve Rogers to ask, “Oh does that mean something different now?” And Peter to blush and respond, “Um, no.”

He doesn’t move over so she ends up plopping down in his lap and not sharing her popcorn with him.

Peter tries once to make pet names a thing.

They’re studying and he asks, “What did you get for number three, babe?”

He winces immediately after he says it, and she’s satisfied she doesn’t have to tell him that he’s made the biggest mistake he’ll make this week.

“Sorry,” he says, shaking his head.

“Yeah, you’d better,” she replies, shoving at his shoulder. “And I got seven rad three so I don’t know where the hell you went wrong.”

Actually, she lied. There’s one other time he throws in a pet name. They’re in the cafeteria and he hands her a tea and she remembers why she enjoys having him around. And she’s adding in some sugar when he chuckles a little.

Which is already bad sign to begin with.

“Hey,” he says, huffing out a little laugh again. It’s sad that something that cute is a sign of impending doom. “You want some honey, honey.”

She walks off and doesn’t speak to him for the next 36 hours.

But like she doesn’t break up with him over it, doesn’t even thinking about it. (Though there have been some of his other terrible jokes that brought her close.)

Everybody seems to think it’ll blow up in her face. She’s observant and sometimes that means hearing people say shitty things about her. And sure if Peter were ever dumb enough to break up with her (because honestly she’s a catch) it would probably be because of her disposition against romanticisms and trivial mortal qualms like anniversaries and being nice in general.

But for some strange reason he seems fine with it, with her, with them. And she is too.

Fine with what they have. She even likes it. That’s not the problem.

 

The problem is this.

Michelle Jones is a loner, by trade and by choice. Sure, she goes to parties and talks to people sometimes and may consider some people she goes to school with “friends” and yeah, she’s dating Peter Parker and spends literally all of her time with him and Ned and May and the Avengers.

But she’s a loner. She likes being alone. She feels safe alone. Not that she doesn’t feel safe with Peter, or with Ned and May and everyone else. But she likes being alone, likes when it’s just her and her thoughts and her things and her books.

She’s constructed a careful persona she wears around to school and everywhere else, a series of walls and layers and locked doors. And granted she’s let a lot of people in, Peter most of all, but there’s still this gap between the person she is with others and the person she is with Peter and the person she is when she’s by herself.

With others she’s completely closed off, quiet, isolated, reading, but always listening, always ready to insert unsolicited commentary. She’s Michelle, weird and wickedly smart, unafraid to call people on their bullshit and tear down every instance of bigotry without so much as blinking. She has no discernible personality, doesn’t have any human emotions, could be an alien or a robot, has probably killed a man. She’s a curve ruiner and a ghost and the best lab partner to get because she’ll do all the work and it will always be right.

With her friends, the few she’s hand selected, she’s MJ. Slightly less closed off, but still an enigma wrapped in a mystery, a cluster of witticisms and occasional actions adjacent to caring. She’s the (mostly) benevolent dictator of the decathlon team, a good person to have in your corner, but also never one to give up any personal information. She was once compared to Ron Swanson. (By Abe and the entire decathlon team decided to start taping Parks and Rec memes to her locker. She doesn’t complain. Betty finds some truly spectacular ones.)

And with Peter…

With Peter she’s everything and anything. He looks at her and she feels like the entire universe. He’s so good, and it rips her in two. He’s a light, right there in front of her, bright and pure and she can tell him anything and he’ll look at her like it’s the best thing he’s ever heard. She tells him things she doesn’t tell anybody, things she thinks, things she’s read and heard and likes. Because she trusts him, and he trusts her with so much that sometimes she just has to repay the favor. And because she loves him, things just slipping out before she’s even cleared them, passed them through the metal detector, because she wants him to know.

But with herself, there’s still more, things that stay in her room between her and the walls. Even with Peter, she’s still maintaining an image, granted one closer to the truth, but nonetheless.

When she’s by herself, she gets to be sloppy and messy and anything else. She plays music just loud enough to explode in her room and she thrashes along to it and knows the words by heart.

(Nobody is allowed to know she has a music taste and thereafter judge the quality of said music taste. It’s a pretty fucking great one, but no one is allowed to know that because they might be idiots and think it’s shitty.)

She throws one of her stress balls at the wall or suppresses a mild panic attacks. She scribbles out the tangents her mind rambles through and paints until her hands and clothes are smeared with colors. She stares at the glow in the dark stars on her ceiling and lets her chest fill with existential dread until three am and guzzles cups of the strongest tea she has the next morning.

Peter has never been in her room before.

He doesn’t seem to notice. He’s been to her apartment, has walked her home before and watched movies on her couch and ate dinner in her kitchen but he’s never been in her room.

Because her room is hers. No one has been in her room. And no one will be in her room.

So there’s a moment. When he says, “You’re a good singer.” soft too, in that gentle Peter voice, that soft smile because he doesn’t realize.

He’s heard her sing when nobody has ever heard her sing. He’s heard a song that is on one of her playlists that she doesn’t let anybody see.

That she never intended to share with anyone.

  
And for some reason it’s different, there’s a difference between this time and every other time that she’s divulged something to him, intentional or non.

Because music belongs in her room, and for a second, traipsing around the kitchen of his apartment, she forgot. She forgot to think, to set up the line between what goes on in her head and what goes on outside.

And she knows she’ll forget again.

Because she feels comfortable with him, too comfortable.

Because this thing with Peter is something lasting. In a few years, she won’t have her room anymore, it’ll be their room in their apartment. No more walls, no more layers.

Peter has systematically worked his way through every boundary, every locked box, made it past every test she’s put in place. He’s everything, he’s endgame. He’s her soulmate, but she keeps her soul in a steel safe behind the false back of a drawer on the floor of her dresser.

She likes being alone, but with Peter it’s almost like she’ll never be alone again. That she doesn’t want to.

And she didn’t even realize how close she was to the edge of this cosmic shift, to this giant change, until she toed the edge and almost lost her balance.

It’s a big drop, and she thinks she might need to take a step back.

 

Only she kinda sucks at breaking up with Peter.

He’s just… he’s so Peter all the time, and she’s stupidly infatuated with him, haplessly in love. It’s atrocious. She doesn’t even want to break up with him, but she has to. It’s ridiculous, what a mess. Fucking emotions, man.

She thinks maybe she should avoid him, but they’re schedules are woven around each others. He has her MetroCard and three of her favorite mugs are in his cupboards. She makes all her food at his apartment, stored half of her clothes there and stolen half of Peter’s.

Her textbooks are in his bookshelf and her highlights are in his drawer. Any time she thinks of doing something it brings her right back to him because they’ve done everything together. They have shared custody of the house plant by the living room window.

She’s not sure where his stuff stops and hers starts anymore.

She tries not talking to him, but he’s used to that, rambles at her, or lets her read while he rambles at Ned.

She thinks about bringing it up but that’s such a terrifying prospect.

“Hey, Peter, you know how I love you. Yeah, still do, but I think we should break up anyway. Cool, see you in english.”

So she just keeps putting it off.

And some days she just kinda forgets about it, but then he’ll say something like, “You like this song right.” And it’s goddamn sweet of him to remember but such a huge problem at the same time.

She needs to take a step back. She used to be good with that, stepping back, reassessing, but she and Peter have been plowing ahead. She hasn’t had to do this in a while. She’s forgotten how.

 

  
He comes to lunch and sits on her side of the table, offering a large tea from the overpriced coffee shop three blocks away and the new Adam Silvera book she's been meaning to get her hands on.

“Hey, MJ,” he says, smiling sheepishly. He's planning something.

“What did you do?” She asks, dragging the cup of tea and the book towards her, behind the book she currently has opened.

“I was wondering, if maybe you'd like to go to junior prom with me?” He asks slowly tentatively, grinning that little bashful Peter grin. God fucking dammit.

“No,” she says carefully and takes a sip of her tea.

He laughs with a tint of nervousness, but he doesn’t see anything wrong. In all honesty she would have said no either way, but he doesn’t get it. She sighs and decides to not say anything because he did bring her tea and a book and she loves him and this all sucks colossally.

She just finishes her book fast so she can start the one he got her and he sits there, right there across from her, somehow losing their game of footsie even though she’s only half paying attention.

Only a few days later and a few days closer to junior prom, which is the dumbest thing on earth by the way and she’s told him that, he brings it up again.

“So, uh, prom,” he says.

“Junior prom,” she corrects, frowning.

“Right. Um, are we going? Cuz I’m cool with ditching if you want to, but Ned wants to go and I don’t want to abandon him, you know,” he explains, shrugging.

She swallows, debates closing her book, but changes her mind. If she’s really gonna do this she can’t look at him.

“Cindy doesn’t have a date yet,” she says, eyes trained steady on the same sentence in her book though she can’t decipher any words.

“Really? I hadn’t heard that. Did she ask anyone because I thought she was going to ask-?”

“She didn’t ask anyone,” she says. “She’s not going to.”

“Cool,” Peter says slowly. “Um…”

“You could ask her,” she adds.

“Um… Sorry, I think I’m missing something,” Peter says. “Why would I ask Cindy? Not that there’s anything wrong with Cindy!”

“Cool, so you can ask her,” she says, barely managing to keep her expression contained in the face of this shitshow.

Peter frowns, eyebrows screwing together in confusion. “Um… what?”

“I have French right now,” she says, even though the bell won’t ring for another three and a half painful minutes.

“Um,” he says again, still looking deeply and existentially confused.

She gathers all of her things in a second and disappears.

 

She decides to lock herself in her room until this prom thing blows over, and this Peter thing blows over, and this life thing for that matter.

But music sounds different and she can’t get as deep into her books and she’s just a jumbled angsty mess, cursing the day she first laid eyes on Peter and also yelling at herself for making things the worst they possibly could be instead of working through her shit.

Ned calls her a full day in and she picks up against all judgement.

“You’d better be dead,” he says.

“You noticed?” she replies, but it comes out stilted because even sarcasm has abandoned her in her hour of need.

“Dude, what the hell is up?” Ned insists.

“I’m having three different identity crisis at the same time,” she explains. Which is actually closer to the truth than anything else she’s managed to work out so far.

She’s have the Inception of identity issues and made a fool of herself in front of Peter and is never leaving her room again.

“Do your thing, weirdo, but at least let us know that you’re not dead because Peter has been freaking out,” Ned orders.

“But what if I want you to think I'm dead?” She asks.

“If you break Peter’s heart, I'll kill you,” he says.

“I'd like to see you try,” she replies, but it's lackluster.

“Haha, I'm serious though,” Ned says. “I never gave you a shovel talk, because you're honestly terrifying when you want to be, but I'm serious here. Figure yourself out and tell Peter what's going on. Because right now he's really confused and sad and it's not fun.”

She sighs and wants to punch the wall or something. “Yeah,” she says. “Not much fun on this end either.”

“Well, good luck,” Ned says.

“Yeah, you too,” she replies.

 

The irony is it ends up being a SnapChat from Flash that does it.

A Snap from Flash and she gets her life together. What is the world even coming to?

She usually doesn't open Flash’s story because he's Flash and an asshole and she doesn't really care what he's doing with his asshole day. But he never sends her shit.

So she's curious and bored and three days into disappearing off the face of the Earth so she opens it.

It’s Peter, because of course it is, looking sad in his cute tux, slumped over in one of the plastic folding chairs in their gym. Flash has also added a bunch of emojis and captions which she elects to ignore.

She tosses her phone across the room, dropping into the nest of blankets in the corner.

She thinks about calling him. Peter, not Flash. Gross.

Before they even started dating she would call him from this room. Into the earliest hours of the morning, curled up in bed or in her blanket nest, listening to him rant or… telling him things she’s never told anyone, feeling safe in her cocoon of blankets, in her room, surrounded by her things.

Feeling secure in her room and her mind, not bothering to turn back on the filter, just letting her brain spill out and over the phone line.

And after, not need a phone because she was in his bed, sprawled out and stealing all his blankets, the blankets that smelled like him. Those moments right before falling asleep where she couldn’t be sure if there was a difference between what she was saying or thinking. When everything in her head was out.

Exchanging secrets and kisses until her eyes slid shut and he pulled the blankets up to their ears.

She doesn’t feel like an idiot, because she’s never been an idiot in her life and she never will be, but it’s like when she reaches the end of a mystery novel and the murderer isn’t who she thought it was and she gets indescribably frustrated at herself for not figuring it out sooner.

Only when it’s her stupid mystery novel, nobody’s feelings are getting hurt.

Fucking feelings, man.

“Goddamnit,” she says and rolls out of bed.

 

She strolls up to junior prom in slippers, a t-shirt, and a pair of pajama bottoms. Her hair is tangled, barely contained to a bun, and she’s carrying her house keys because she forgot to bring a bag.

Peter still looks at her like she’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen.

“Michelle,” he says slowly.

“In the flesh,” she says and takes his hand. “Come on.”

“What?” he asks. God, he’s so dumb.

“We need to talk,” she explains.

He nods. “Right, yeah,” he agrees. “I just wanted to say-”

She shakes her head. “Not here,” she sighs. “In case you haven’t noticed, I kinda made an entrance.”

Half the gym is staring at them. The other half is trying to make it look less obvious.

“Oh,” he says.

“Come on,” she repeats, tugging on his hand. He gets to his feet and lets her tug him back out the way she came.

He blinks at her a few times once they’re outside, waiting for the bus because she’s not walking all the way home at 10:30 in her pajamas.

“Your slippers have bunny ears,” he says.

“Thank you,” she says. The bus gratefully shows up.

 

“Have I never been in your room before?” Peter asks, eyebrows furrowing.

She sighs. “Welcome to the Fortress of Solitude, help yourself to some gummy bears.”

“No way,” he says, making a beeline for the bag open on her desk. She rolls her eyes, but it’s fond. He’s such a dork.

He takes it all in slowly, mouth full of gummy bears, eyes darting through everything, every bit of herself that she’s laid out in this room.

She knows her nose is wrinkled. It’s so weird having another person here, next to her things. Yet somehow Peter seems to fit right in.

“You did ballet?” he asks, picking up one of her trophies.

“I did ballet so hard that I beat it,” she replies.

“That’s not a thing,” he says, putting it back just as carefully.

She shrugs. He’s already moved on.

“Hey where’d you get the cool Spidey merch?” he asks, stepping closer to her poster wall.

“That’s not merch,” she replies.

It takes him a few seconds, staring at the picture on her wall and the canvas in the corner and her paints on the desk.

“No way,” he says, whirling to face her, eyes gleaming. She shrugs. “Holy shit. It’s so pretty.”

She wasn’t really going for pretty, but whatever.

“It’s me,” he says slowly, getting all sappy, getting all his gross love all over her room.

“No, it’s Spider-Man, Peter. Are you trying to tell me something?” she says. She likes that painting, the way the skyline looks in the background. It’s one of her better ones, but that’s not Peter. She has a lot of paintings of Peter, drawings and sketches and God, she’s pathetic.

“MJ?” he says.

She sits down in the blanket nest, pats the space next to her.

“I’ve been a dick,” she says. He takes her hand.

“I wouldn’t go that far,” he says.

“I was a flake,” she says. “I was like you.”

“Hey,” he protests.

“I was so dramatic, you would have been proud,” she continues.

“Michelle,” he whines.

“Anyway, I’m sorry. I needed to work out some shit, and I wasn’t the best at communicating about it. In case you haven’t noticed, that’s not my strong suit.”

“That’s alright,” he says. She shrugs.

“Okay, I'm gonna say something really important,” she says and takes a deep breath. “I have feelings. You know the way humans do.”

He blinks and then smiles at her.

“No really?” He asks, all mock surprise, like a nerd.

She nods solemnly. “Yup, you can only shed so much of the human condition.”

“Well, thanks for telling me,” he says.

“You're the first person who has been in my room in seven years,” she says.

“Well, I can see why,” he says carefully. “It's a mess.”

She yanks all of the blankets towards her.  
“Get out of my nest,” she demands.

“It's a nest!” He says, glancing down at the pile. “That's adorable.”

“Shut up,” she says, and shoves him out of the nest.

“I love you,” he says, sitting in the middle of her carpet in her room in his dumb prom tux.

“I love you too,” she says. “Big fucking surprise.”

He beams and she leans over and kisses him hard and desperate for a moment.  
When she pulls back, his eyes stay closed.

“I'm glad you could work out your shit,” he says. “And now that I know you have feelings, if you ever need help with them, i have some experience.”

“Peter, your coping mechanisms involve spandex and crime fighting,” she says.

“Maybe so,” he replies with a shrug and another huge grin. “Yours involve locking yourself in a Fortress of Solitude.”

“Yeah but now I've locked you in the Fortress with me,” she says. “Less healthy or more healthy?”

He shrugs. “Don't know. Better for me though.”

She lets him back into the nest, even lets him have a blanket, and he rests his head on her shoulder.

“Hey Peter,” she says quietly.

“Yeah,” he replies just as soft.

“There is only tea in the Fortress.”

“Oh no. Let me out of here,” he says dryly, burying his face into her shoulder.

“Too late,” she says, kissing his temple.  
He hums, pulls the blankets up.

“Hey, wanna know how you can make this up to me?” He says.

“Who says I'm making anything up?” She asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Go to real prom with me?” He asks, eyes soft and sleepy and staring up at her.

“Gross,” she says. “I'm in.”

It's quiet and dark out and she can tell Peter is tired, probably about to fall asleep on her shoulder.

“Hey,” she says.

“Yeah, MJ?” He replies.

“You know I love you, right,” she says. “Like you know, right? I'm like a mess about you. Like everything about you. You know, right?”

He nods, squeezes her hand. “I know. I'm better at context clues than you give me credit.”

“No you're not.”

He sighs. “No, I'm not. But I’m getting better.”

“Where do you see us in five years?” she asks, glancing over at him, at the way the light from her three lamps bounce off him.

“Are you interviewing me?” he asks, nose wrinkling. She shrugs.

“Probably. Where do you think we’ll be?”

“You know I hate that question, because I have no clue about five years. Four years we’ll be in college, but I don’t know about five yet,” he grumbles. “But like, we’ll be together. If that’s what you’re asking. Unless I somehow screw this all up.”

She nods, like him screwing up is a rational concern. He’d have to kill a cat in front of her. He’d have to openly proclaim support for Donald Trump. She’s in deep.

“I see us together too,” she says, shrugging. “All adulting and stuff with jobs and shit. Living together. And it freaked me out, because I need to be alone sometimes, being this awesome all the time takes a toll, but when I’m with you I don’t want to be alone. And I guess I had to figure out I don’t have to. Because I’ve already trapped you so I don’t need to convince you I’m awesome.”

“You’re always awesome,” he says.

“Yeah, but it takes effort,” she explains. “I need to take breaks.”

“You’re always awesome, MJ,” he repeats. He squeezes her hand and she takes a deep breath.

“Yeah, you’re not half bad yourself, Parker,” she says. “Most of the time.”

“Shut up,” he says, frowning. Which sounds like a good idea, she’s tired. There’s only so much of self reflection she can handle.

“I can’t believe you showed up to prom in bunny slippers,” he says, giggling into her shirt.

“I can’t believe you wore those shoes,” she says, shoving at him. “Now shut up or get out.”

“I thought I was locked in here.”

“Peter.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope you guys liked it and if you did please let me know. I'm not sure how good this one is so feedback would really be helpful. 
> 
> Also even though I have a lot going on, keep sending me prompts on tumblr @applejuiz. I'll eventually get to all of them, but if you can be patient I'd love to hear from you.


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